


Distinguishing Mark

by apolesen



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Setlik III, Tattoos, Unlearning prejudice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 15:09:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14475351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolesen/pseuds/apolesen
Summary: An innocent question about O’Brien’s tattoo leads to an uncomfortable discussion.





	Distinguishing Mark

**Author's Note:**

> I have taken liberties of what we see of people's skin and them having or not having tattoos. Also, I personally hate the Universal Translator, so I have completely ignored it. 
> 
> Thanks to S for help with the Irish, and thanks to D and A for betaing.

In retrospect, it was quite odd that he had failed to notice it for so long. Bashir did not know how many times he had seen O’Brien’s bare arms, during everything from matches to physicals, and still he had never really registered it. 

The first time that distinguishing mark caught his eye properly was after a racquetball session, when they sat down to catch their breaths. O’Brien, overheating as usual, took off his t-shirt and wiped his face on it. 

‘Good game,’ he said, breathing heavily. Bashir handed him a bottle of water. ‘Ta.’ 

‘You put up a good fight,’ Bashir said. He was more than a little winded himself. Sweat was making his overalls stick to his skin, and his hair had lost its usual fall. 

‘Don’t fool yourself. I could still take you,’ O’Brien said, getting his breath back a little.

‘You’re welcome to try.’ 

He exhaled heavily. 

‘It’ll have to be next week.’ 

Bashir looked over at him and laughed. O’Brien grinned back. There was something old-fashioned about him like this, sweaty and ruddy and bare-chested. He looked like he should be pushing a plough or climbing the rigging of a ship. 

That last thought, of O’Brien as a sailor from one of those adventure books he had loved as a child, had been prompted by one particular detail. He leaned back a little and looked at his arm. 

‘I’ve never really noticed that before,’ he said, pointing at the tattoo on it. 

‘Oh? Yes. I’ve had it for a long time,’ O’Brien said. Bashir wondered if his tone was down to post-exercise exhaustion or discomfort with the situation. He was not looking at him anymore, which made him wonder if it was the latter. However, now that he had spotted the tattoo, he was too curious not to study it closer.

The three components were arranged vertically on his upper arm. Just below the shoulder joint was a Starfleet delta. Set underneath it was a stylised star-system. Part of it was set between the delta’s lower points, as if it was straddling it. Furthest down, written in a semi-circle following the outermost planet’s orbit, was a phrase. He recognised it as Irish, but could not understand it.

‘Have you gawked enough?’ O’Brien got to his feet, shirt in his hand. Bashir looked at him, startled at his changed tone of voice. 

‘I wasn’t gawking,’ he said. ‘Or didn’t mean to.’ 

‘Well you _were_.’ O’Brien pulled his t-shirt on again, tugging at the left sleeve in particular. 

‘Why are you like this all of a sudden?’ Bashir asked, the surprise turning into offence. O’Brien inhaled, as if about to start shouting, but then he deflated. 

‘Sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s… Well, you know.’ 

‘I don’t,’ Bashir said. O’Brien sat back down again and pulled up his sleeve.

‘You don’t know what this is?’ He pointed to the star-system. It was a binary system with seven planets in it, all of them filled in with black ink except for the third, which was a circle with the centre left uninked. 

‘No,’ he admitted. O’Brien leaned back against the wall with a sigh.

‘It’s the Setlik system.’ 

‘ _Oh_.’ Now he realised why the third planet had been drawn differently from the others. They sat in silence for a while. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I really had no idea. If I’d realised what it represented, I wouldn’t have brought it up…’ 

‘I don’t like it.’ 

Bashir looked at him in surprise. 

‘What?’

‘The tattoo. I don’t like it.’ 

Bashir was lost for words. 

‘It’s a nice piece of work.’ 

‘It’s not that.’ O’Brien leaned his elbows on his knees and stared into the floor. 

‘What does the motto mean?’ 

O’Brien did not look at him when he answered. 

‘“Never forget what they did.”’ 

Bashir had a feeling that if he did not speak, this would go smoother than if he did. Resisting the urge to ramble, he bit his lip and waited. They must have sat there for several minutes. Finally, O’Brien spoke. 

‘Do you know how old I was when the Setlik III massacre happened?’ 

‘It was in ’48?’ 

‘’47,’ O’Brien said. ‘I was nineteen.’ 

Bashir let out a sigh, puffing his cheeks up. At nineteen, his biggest worry had been finding time to both study and play tennis. Simultaneously, he thought of his own life in 2347. His memories of that time were fuzzy – he had only been six. It was a full year before his parents took him to Adigeon Prime. Mostly he remembered how overwhelming school was. Not for the first time, he wished he could talk to his friend about that, but it was impossible. 

‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like,’ he said. O’Brien shook his head. 

‘You really can’t.’ All the anger was gone from him now. Instead, he spoke with a weariness that belonged to a much older man. 

‘You don’t have to explain,’ Bashir said softly. O’Brien tried to smile, but did not really manage. ‘When did you get the tattoo?’ 

‘That same year. The next leave I had on a space-station big enough to have a tattoo parlour.’ He leaned back, bringing them side by side again. ‘I drew it up myself. Worked on it for months. I wanted something permanent to remind me of what I’d seen. If people recognised the star-system, they could figure out that I was there. Not that many people understood the text, of course, but that was intentional. It was my secret.’ He clenched his jaw. ‘It used to remind me of what I believed in, how I became who I am, and it was comforting. But now…’ He exhaled with frustration. ‘Every time I see it, I feel a little piece of my self-respect being chipped away.’ 

Bashir had the urge to touch him, to anchor him in the moment somehow, but he knew better than to try. 

‘It’s the text that bothers you,’ he said. 

O’Brien nodded. 

‘It was easier, hating them, wanting revenge, calling them “Cardies”. But as it turns out, none of it is as simple as I thought.’ He looked down at his hands and absent-mindedly started pushing down the cuticle on his thumb. ‘What the Cardassians did at Setlik III is horrifying. What they did on Bajor during the occupation is horrifying. But it doesn’t mean they collectively deserve to be hated or punished.’ 

‘It takes a lot of courage to admit being wrong,’ Bashir said. O’Brien shook his head. 

‘I wasn’t just wrong. It was worse than that. When I got that tattoo, I was proud I had been there, and that I had done what I did. It made me sick, but I was still proud. Now…’ He sighed. ‘How do I stop thinking these things when I inked a reminder to hate them into my skin? It doesn’t say to remember the people on Setlik III, or what happened to them, but not to forget what the Cardassians did. Don’t forget to hate them.’ 

‘You’ve changed,’ Bashir said. ‘It’s not so strange that you see the world differently at forty-three than you did at nineteen. Frankly, I’d be alarmed if you hadn’t changed.’ Realising that might not help, he changed approach. ‘It’s a good thing, but it’ll take time. Getting over prejudice is a process. You can’t expect it to happen all in one day.’ 

‘Yeah, I know,’ O’Brien said. 

‘You can’t blame yourself for having been young,’ Bashir said. ‘And you can’t blame yourself from having been traumatised.’ 

‘Is that what you think I was?’ 

‘I couldn’t say for sure without reviewing your psychological evaluations, but the events on Setlik III were clearly traumatic to anyone involved. Few in Starfleet had seen that level of violence before. Add to that that it was just after that that you started taking an interest in engineering, moving away from front-line combat…’ 

‘Julian,’ O’Brien said, tone somewhere between warning and amused. 

‘You get my point.’ 

‘Yes. I suppose you’re right.’ 

Again, they were silent for a few minutes. 

‘How often does it happen that people recognise it?’ Bashir asked. 

‘Not very often. It did happen last year, when the Cardassians put me on trial. I think one of the guards recognised it. Apparently they’d been told not to hurt me, but he was… very rough.’ 

Bashir exhaled in sympathy. 

‘I’m sorry.’ 

O’Brien shrugged, as if to say it could not be helped. 

‘Did you know I’ve never asked Garak to alter anything but trousers?’ 

Bashir thought that was a very odd thing to say, before realising what he meant.

‘Because he’d figure out what it was, if he saw it.’ 

‘I’m sure of it. He’d figure out what the sentence meant, too. He might not know Irish, but he’s devious enough to remember the words and run them through a translation matrix.’ 

‘Probably.’ Bashir hesitated before asking: ‘Have you thought about having it removed?’ 

‘Yes,’ O’Brien said, ‘but it doesn’t feel right. It’s not really about the tattoo itself, really. It’s about that I got it. Chose those words. If I removed it, I’d be trying to change that. That doesn’t feel right.’ 

‘You could add something,’ Bashir said. ‘If you found something appropriate to cover it with…’ 

‘Maybe. I _have_ played with the thought. Just don’t know what.’ 

‘Can I see it again?’ 

O’Brien pulled up the sleeve of his t-shirt and Bashir leaned closer to see it. The delta and the star-system were not just well-rendered, but well-drawn. He tried to imagine them without the sentence, but it was difficult. On instinct, he raised his hand and touched him. O’Brien jumped with surprise, but he did not pull away. Bashir curved his fingers and placed them just under the orbit of the outer planet, covering the words. 

‘There,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t look half-bad.’ 

O’Brien smiled. Bashir smiled back. 

‘If you need a sounding-board what you could do with it…’ 

‘Thanks. I might just take you up on that.’ He moved to the side a little. Bashir removed his hand, embarrassed. O’Brien got to his feet and picked up his racquet. ‘I need to get home. I promised Keiko I’d be back for dinner.’ 

Bashir got up too. 

‘Of course. Sure.’ They stood frozen for a moment, looking at each other. How strange, Bashir thought, that something as visible as a tattoo could be a source to feeling so exposed. 

‘Don’t let me keep you,’ he said. 

O’Brien smiled, tight-lipped. 

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’ 

‘Yes,’ Bashir said. ‘Say hello to the family from me.’ 

‘I will.’ 

O’Brien turned and, without another word, left. Bashir picked up his racquet and hit the ball against the wall a few times until he was certain O’Brien would be out of sight. Catching the ball and tucking the racquet under his arm, he went back to his quarters. He would usually be ravenously hungry after such a racquetball session, but not today. His mind buzzed as he put away the equipment, undressed and showered. When he got out of the shower, he did not bother to dress, only throw on a dressing-gown. Instead of heading to the replicator, he went to his desk. From one of the drawers, he produced a stack of paper and a good pen. Holding the pen-cap between his teeth, he copied O’Brien’s tattoo from memory onto one of the sheets. He took particular care writing out the phrase, word for word: 

_Ná déan dearmad go brách ar cad a rinne siad_

When he was satisfied, he placed it over the computer console and covered it with a blank sheet from the pile beside him. The light was just bright enough to show the lines through the paper. Bashir put the cap on the end of the pen and steadied the paper with his free hand. He stopped to think for a moment, of stars, flowers, abstract patterns, pieces of circuitry, alien and human scripts. Then, he put pen to paper and started drawing. 


End file.
